Top Tips for booking your SciEnts show

Top Tips for booking a SciEnts show

If you want to genuinely engage children or adults with profound and practical science and maths for a reasonable price, you simply can’t beat a professional show.

If you’ve never hosted one before, rest assured that all of our performers are flexible and experienced enough to deliver successful events even when under tight constraints, and will do all they can to make your event go smoothly. However, there are some things you need to think about.

Audience for your science show

You get to choose which performer you think your audience will get the most from. This will depend on their age (note the “Primary”, “Secondary” and “Adult” buttons) and the subject or subjects they’ll find the most useful or interesting to learn about. We have quality science and maths shows for all Key Stages in all STEM subjects but only you, the organiser, gets to actually go shopping!

Dates for your science performer

You should have a pretty firm idea of when you want the shows to take place if you want to sort out a booking with minimum fuss. This might require you to find out about constraints on venue use, exam schedules or other complications.

Location of your SciEnts show

In principle, all of our science speakers/performers are willing to travel anywhere in the UK. Certain, hard-to-reach areas might incur greater travel expenses and be limited to dates when a performance is already in or near your area. If you can convince another school or venue to book with you in order to offer two consecutive paid days, you’ll encounter much greater flexibility in this respect.

Logistics for the show

On the day, most performers will arrive an hour (or more) before their show and require a parking space as close to the venue as possible. They will then need at least 30 minutes in the venue to set up and a similar time afterwards to take down. They will generally also need a projector and screen and an extension cord. Their equipment will also require secure storage if the room cannot be locked between performances. Finally, some performances can be loud, and so adjacent rooms should be notified of the possible disruption.

Payment

Though our performers are deeply committed to science engagement, they can’t work for free, and so you should check that money will be available for the event. Most of the ‘Troupe’ charge a similar, very reasonable daily rate for school science shows, and a one-off fee for corporate events. The cost varies, but usually sits around the £400 mark for two shows so it is usually more cost-efficient to ask for two or more sittings and try to maximise the size of each audience (within reason!).